After a fairy tale beginning to this season, it appears that the Broncos glass slipper has not only shattered but a shard may have lodged in the carotid artery.
A week after getting shellacked by a motivated yet mediocre Ravens team, tonight the Broncos came home looking for that same Mile High magic that previously beat the Patriots and Cowboys and a big home win over the defending champ Pittsburgh Steelers. Instead, their performance only raised more questions as their offense again showed about as much life as Bernie Lomax.
While the geniuses in the cheap seats will undoubtedly point to Kyle Orton’s performance (or lack thereof) as the weak link for this particular offense, that misses a much bigger problem.
A problem that averages about 6’4” and 315 pounds to be precise.
Yes, Kyle Orton was not good. And weak is actually a pretty good description of his major deficiency. There is no doubting that Orton’s weak arm impacts the offense (compare him throwing downfield while scrambling to Big Ben throwing downfield while scrambling) but that isn’t the biggest impediment to this offense.
The biggest challenges they face are: 1 – no rushing game and 2 – no downfield passing game.
For those of you that didn’t do so well on the math section of SATs, there is one common denominator to those two weaknesses.
The Broncos offensive line is pathetic.
The offensive line gets no pop, no drive – they can’t clear out the defensive line and therefore the running game has nowhere to go. Exhibit A – the rushing game totaling 93 yards over the last two weeks combined.
With no threat of a rushing game, the defensive line tees off with the pass rush and Orton has no time to get the ball deep. Right now, whether he can throw the ball deep or not, is sort of like debating if Nessie, the Loch Ness monster is a male or female. If you never see Nessie, does it really matter?
Let’s face it; the strongest armed quarterback in the league wouldn’t be much more productive than Orton is in this offense without any more time to wait for things to open up downfield.
This offense is going to struggle until the Broncos find a way to open holes for their smallish, quick, injury-prone running backs (though that doesn’t excuse the fact that the MNF announcers gushed over James Harrison’s cheap shot of Correl Buckhalter tonight. When I was growing up that was called spearing. Now it proves how great Harrison is. If that happens to Tom Brady, Jaworski would be lobbying for legislation protecting him right now). Until they begin running the ball, the passing game is never going to be able to throw further than 10 yards downfield.
Thankfully, they get to next take on a team only slightly less organized than the Iraqi congress in the Washington Redskins. This week gives the Broncos to get the offense righted going against a defense ranked 25th in running yards allowed and dead last in turnovers.
If the Broncos can’t get running against the Skins, then I am afraid that their playoff hopes are going to be as stuck in 2005 as that little British woman that brought us the title of this post.
